Alā yā ayyoha-s-sāqī

The poem opens with a line of Arabic, which according to the commentary of the Bosnian-Turkish scholar Ahmed Sudi (d. 1598), is adapted from a quatrain written by the 7th-century Caliph Yazid I.[4] The original quatrain, according to Sudi, was as follows:

انا المسموم ما عندي

بترياق ولا راقي

ادر كاساً وناولها

الا يا ايها الساقي

ʼana-l-masmūmu mā ʿindī

bi-taryāqi wa-lā rāqī

ʼadir kaʼsan wa-nāwilhā

ʼalā yā ʼayyuha-s-sāqī

I am poisoned and I do not have

any remedy or enchanter.

Circulate a cup and pass it;

Ho there, o wine-pourer!

Sudi also quotes from poems of two Persian poets, Kātibī of Nishabur (d. 1434-5)[5] and Ahli Shirazi (d. 1535), in which they express surprise that Hafez had borrowed a line from such a hated figure as Yazid, who was notorious among other things for causing the death of the Prophet's grandson Husayn at the Battle of Karbala in 680. Some Iranians believe that Sudi was mistaken in attributing the quatrain to Yazid; they include Hafez's editor Muhammad Qazvini, who published an article arguing against the attribution.[6] The verse is not included in a volume containing the collected fragments of Yazid's poetry published in 1982; but according to Meisami, even if it is not by Yazid, it is likely that Hafez believed it was and used it deliberately.[7]

The Arabic quatrain is also in the hazaj metre. The Arabic version of this metre allows an occasional short syllable in the fourth position of the line, as in the second line above. There is an internal rhyme in the second line of the above quatrain (taryāqi ... lā rāqī). A similar internal rhyme is used in Hafez's Shirazi Turk ghazal (bedeh sāqī mey-ē baqī...), which uses the same metre.

When Arabic phrases are included in Persian poems, it is usual to pronounce the words with Persian phonology as if they were Persian.[8]

According to Sudi, the word būy has both a literal meaning "scent" and a figurative meaning "hope": "in the hope of that musk-pod".[9] Translators interpret the present tense بگشاید bogšāyad "opens" in different ways. Some[10] translate it as present, others[11] as future, others[12] as past.

Musk is a costly perfume derived from the gland (nāfe) of a certain deer.[13] The combination of the morning breeze (sabā) and the scent of musk is common in Persian poetry, and is even found in the famous mu'allaqa of the 6th-century Arabian poet Imru' al-Qais (verse 8):

نَسِيْـمَ الصَّبَـا جَـاءَتْ بِـرَيَّـا القَرَنْـفُـلِ

إِذَا قَامَـتَـا تَـضَـوَّعَ المِـسْـكُ مِنْـهُـمَـا

’iḏā qāmatā taḍawwa‘a l-misku minhumā

nasīma ṣ-ṣabā jā’at bi-rayya l-qaranfulī

Fair were they also, diffusing the odor of musk as they moved,

Like the Saba breeze bringing with it the scent of the clove.

The word تاب tāb has a range of meanings: "heat, burning, radiance, lustre, twist, curl".[14][15]

The word مشکین moškīn or meškīn[16] can also mean "black".[17] Meisami translates as "musk-black curls".

Dehkhoda's dictionary defines xūn dar del oftādan (literally, "blood falls in the heart") as to become troubled or grieved.[18] According to Avery and Heath-Stubbs, the idea of this verse is that such beauty makes the hearts of lovers bleed.[19] Meisami, however, translates as "what blood rushed into (lovers') hearts?"[20] According to an image commonly found in Persian and Arabic poetry, the heat (tāb) of the beloved's curls causes the lover's blood to heat up and emerge in the form of sighs. She points out the repeated "ā" sounds in this verse, which may represent sighing.

Some translators interpret the phrase manzel-ē jānān as referring to "this world" (Clarke), "life's caravanserai" (Arberry). Many translate jānān (literally "souls") as "the Beloved" (Clarke, Salami, Seif). However, Seif disagrees that Hafez is referring to the world. He interprets: "In this couplet of our ghazal, the speaker is complaining of the temporariness of his visit with the Beloved." He adds: "In Sufism, there are seven "Manzels," "stages," on the way to the Beloved, of which the last one is "tajarrod" that means "oneness"."[21]

The following well-known verse by Rumi expresses a similar idea in which the mystical journey towards union with God is compared to setting off from a caravanserai:[22][23]

ای عاشقان ای عاشقان * هنگام کوچ است از جهان

در گوش جانم می رسد * طبل رحیل از آسمان

'ey 'āšeqān 'ey 'āšeqān, * hengām-e kūč ast az jahān

dar gūš-e jān-am mīrasad * tabl-ē rahīl az 'āsmān

"O lovers, o lovers, it is time for setting off from the world;

into the ear of my soul there comes from heaven the drum of departure."

Meisami, however, sees Hafez here not so much referring to "this world" as making a literary allusion to the image commonly found in Arabic poetry of the departing tribe abandoning their halting-place and taking the women with them, carried in litters on the camels' backs.[24] She suggests that the word rasm, usually translated as "customs", might in this context have the same meaning it has in Imru' al-Qais's mu'allaqa (verses 2 and 6), namely "traces" of the encampment.

The Magian Elder (or Zoroastrian wine-seller) is frequently mentioned in Hafez's poetry, and is often used symbolically for the spiritual adviser or Pir, "dispensing wine and true wisdom".[25] An initiate who wished to be guided in the spiritual path was known as a murīd "disciple" or sālik "traveller". Annemarie Schimmel writes: "The mystical path has sometimes been described as a ladder, a staircase that leads to heaven, on which the salik slowly and patiently climbs toward higher levels of experience."[26]

This mystical interpretation of the verse is followed by Arberry: the wine-seller "knows by experience that reason is powerless to solve the ultimate riddle of the universe ... and that it is only the wine of unreason that makes life in this world a tolerable burden."[27] Meisami does not see this verse as primarily mystical, but believes that Hafez "is retracing a life of ... poetry, – his own poetry, and that of the tradition that informs it." ... "Hafiz appropriates both the Persian and the earlier Arabic traditions of love poetry."[28]

Some translators follow a different order of verses: Clarke and Bell put verse 4 after verse 2, Arberry places it after verse 5, while Seif (without manuscript authority) puts it after verse 6. Others (e.g. Salami, Avery & Heath-Stubbs), following the order of the text above, connect verse 5 in sense to verse 4. The idea is that only the seasoned traveller knows the difficulties of the spiritual journey, which are compared to storms.

Arberry compares this verse with ghazal 143 (Sālhā del) verse 2, where those who have never experienced the torments of divine love are referred to as gom-šodegān-ē lab-e daryā "those lost on the edge of the sea".[29] The "sea" is used in mystic poetry as a metaphor for divine love. The early 12th-century mystic poet Sana'i wrote:[30]

عشق دریای محیط و آب دریا آتشست

موجها آید که گویی کوههای ظلمتست

'ešq daryā-yē mohīt ō āb-e daryā ātaš ast

mowjhā āyad ke gū'ī kūhhā-yē zolmat ast

Love is a sea which encircles the world and the water of the sea is fire;

waves come which are like the mountains of the place of darkness.

Seif explains: "Here Hafez is referring to his libertine way of life. As an unconventional man, he had no regard for name, whether good or bad. ... For him, if ascetics and bigots should enjoy good names, he would rather be infamous."[31]

According to Clarke, the -ī on the word hozūrī "presence" is a redundant suffix found also in other abstract nouns such as salāmatī "safety" and ziyādatī "abundance".[32]

The gender of the beloved is ambiguous in Persian. It could be a woman, as in the Arabic poetry which Hafez is apparently imitating, or a boy or young man, as often in Persian love poetry; or it could refer to God, if the poem is given a Sufic interpretation.[33]

The final half-verse, like the first, is in Arabic. Sudi gives no source for this, so it is presumably Hafez's own composition.[34] Avery and Heath-Stubbs comment: "By continued perseverance, that may be obtained for which the world is well lost."[35]